Q document
08 Dec '05 02:31I've been studying early Christian history off and on for a while now. One thing that has interested me is how the bible came to be written. Two items in particular - the "two source hypothesis" and the "Q document", have been of great interest. Since so many of the recent threads here have been absolute garbage, I've decided to write a post about the Q document. I've tried to keep it short enough to be readable, but have had to sacrifice a great amount of information in the process. So here it is:
Many people have long speculated that what ended up in the bible has little relation to what Jesus may or may not have actually said (for the purposes of this post, I will assume that Jesus actually existed in some capacity). The traditional Christian myth claims that the bible is the word of God, which Jesus passed on to the apostles, who passed them down to the church fathers, who passed it on to the bishops, in an unbroken line of “apostolic succession”, down to this day. This view is demonstrably false. On the contrary, It has been deduced that much of what is now in the New Testament was written long after Jesus’ death, which is generally thought to have occurred between 26 and 36 CE. Most sources put Mark as being the oldest of the gospels, probably having been written between 65 and 70 CE. This leaves a gap of at least 30 years between Jesus’ death and the writing of Mark.
The early Jesus community transmitted their beliefs mainly via oral tradition until things were written down in the mid to late first century. It is certain that during this formative period, wholesale errors or many outright distortions were introduced into the Christian doctrine. There are many who would claim that the bible (and modern Christianity) owes more to Paul than it does to Jesus. The problem is compounded by the fact that there were many widely divergent variations of Christianity during the first two centuries, all of which claimed to have their origin in Jesus’ teachings. How, then, is one to know what it was that Jesus actually said? And more importantly, how closely does modern Christianity resemble what Jesus had in mind?
It has been argued that the oldest of Jesus’ teachings would be the most authentic. They would have been subjected to the least amount of error or manipulation. If one could reconstruct what was being said during the lost period of oral tradition, they would have the most authentic teachings of Jesus. This is where the “Q document” comes into play. The Q document (Q from the German word Quelle, which means source) is a hypothetical lost text which is likely to have contained the earliest recorded sayings of Jesus, and which is at the heart of the “two source hypothesis.”
They two source hypothesis claims that both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke have much in common which had its source in the Gospel of Mark (the earliest known gospel). They also have much in common which does not come from Mark. It has been theorized that they must have had a second source: a lost, hypothetical collection of sayings which have been dubbed “Q.” The two source hypothesis was first put forth in 1838 by Christian Hermann Weisse, but its existence and contents remained highly speculative. Following modern biblical discoveries, such as the Nag Hammadi library, the two source hypothesis has gained increasing acceptance amongst biblical scholars. By using the Gospel of Thomas and by comparing Luke with Matthew, it has been possible to make a good reconstruction of what the Q document contained.
Without going into any details on its purported contents, the hypothetical Q document reveals the teachings of Jesus in a very different light. We see that when Jesus preaches of the kingdom, it is to be located on this earth in the not very distant future (of his time), indeed it is to be within the lifetime of many of those present. He is concerned with how people are to behave in this life and to prepare for the coming of the kingdom which is thought to be imminent. One of the reasons the early Jesus community didn’t write all this stuff down is because they didn’t think they’d need to. After all, the kingdom was right around the corner. It was only after they realized that the kingdom wasn’t coming so soon after all that they started to put everything into print. When people realized they weren’t going to be rewarded here, in their own lifetime, the doctrine evolved to where the kingdom was in the afterlife. After all the meddling by Paul and others, Christianity looked virtually nothing like what Jesus had envisioned.
And there you have it.
Many people have long speculated that what ended up in the bible has little relation to what Jesus may or may not have actually said (for the purposes of this post, I will assume that Jesus actually existed in some capacity). The traditional Christian myth claims that the bible is the word of God, which Jesus passed on to the apostles, who passed them down to the church fathers, who passed it on to the bishops, in an unbroken line of “apostolic succession”, down to this day. This view is demonstrably false. On the contrary, It has been deduced that much of what is now in the New Testament was written long after Jesus’ death, which is generally thought to have occurred between 26 and 36 CE. Most sources put Mark as being the oldest of the gospels, probably having been written between 65 and 70 CE. This leaves a gap of at least 30 years between Jesus’ death and the writing of Mark.
The early Jesus community transmitted their beliefs mainly via oral tradition until things were written down in the mid to late first century. It is certain that during this formative period, wholesale errors or many outright distortions were introduced into the Christian doctrine. There are many who would claim that the bible (and modern Christianity) owes more to Paul than it does to Jesus. The problem is compounded by the fact that there were many widely divergent variations of Christianity during the first two centuries, all of which claimed to have their origin in Jesus’ teachings. How, then, is one to know what it was that Jesus actually said? And more importantly, how closely does modern Christianity resemble what Jesus had in mind?
It has been argued that the oldest of Jesus’ teachings would be the most authentic. They would have been subjected to the least amount of error or manipulation. If one could reconstruct what was being said during the lost period of oral tradition, they would have the most authentic teachings of Jesus. This is where the “Q document” comes into play. The Q document (Q from the German word Quelle, which means source) is a hypothetical lost text which is likely to have contained the earliest recorded sayings of Jesus, and which is at the heart of the “two source hypothesis.”
They two source hypothesis claims that both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke have much in common which had its source in the Gospel of Mark (the earliest known gospel). They also have much in common which does not come from Mark. It has been theorized that they must have had a second source: a lost, hypothetical collection of sayings which have been dubbed “Q.” The two source hypothesis was first put forth in 1838 by Christian Hermann Weisse, but its existence and contents remained highly speculative. Following modern biblical discoveries, such as the Nag Hammadi library, the two source hypothesis has gained increasing acceptance amongst biblical scholars. By using the Gospel of Thomas and by comparing Luke with Matthew, it has been possible to make a good reconstruction of what the Q document contained.
Without going into any details on its purported contents, the hypothetical Q document reveals the teachings of Jesus in a very different light. We see that when Jesus preaches of the kingdom, it is to be located on this earth in the not very distant future (of his time), indeed it is to be within the lifetime of many of those present. He is concerned with how people are to behave in this life and to prepare for the coming of the kingdom which is thought to be imminent. One of the reasons the early Jesus community didn’t write all this stuff down is because they didn’t think they’d need to. After all, the kingdom was right around the corner. It was only after they realized that the kingdom wasn’t coming so soon after all that they started to put everything into print. When people realized they weren’t going to be rewarded here, in their own lifetime, the doctrine evolved to where the kingdom was in the afterlife. After all the meddling by Paul and others, Christianity looked virtually nothing like what Jesus had envisioned.
And there you have it.
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